This is the forum dedicated to all 'minor' local psyops - phony murders, kidnappings and whatnot. It has now become evident that the news media constantly feeds the public with entirely fake stories - in order to keep us in eternal fear of our next-door neighbours and fellow citizens.

Remember Evel Knievel? Invincible motorcycle daredevil who “broke every bone in his body” yet kept on doing incredible jumps? He was famous when I was a boy growing up in the 70s. He came to mind after I read a post quoting Daniel Dennett discussing the possibility about a fake televised stunt. On a hunch, I looked up Evel Knievel on YouTube and found this clip from a Discovery Channel documentary, concerning how he took a spill after his jump over the 140 foot (43 m) long Caesars Palace fountain on December 31, 1967:

full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX2XUESyXsI

“Jay Sarno Jr. was the son of the Caesars’ owner, and witnessed the jump first hand”:

Sarno: ...and we saw the ambulance come up, and my father grabbed my — I was nine at the time, my brother I believe was six — and he grabbed us and said we gotta leave we gotta go to hospital and see what’s happening.

Narrator: Reports began to circulate that the daredevil had sunk into a life-threatening coma, or even that he had died in the crash.

Sarno: I asked my father, was Mr. Knievel going to die, I think is what I asked, and he said no, he’s not going to die, but that’s not necessarily going to be what you read in the papers the next day.

Narrator: The crash was horrifying. Knievel was concussed, and suffered multiple fractures. His injuries were serious, but not life-threatening.

Sarno: The story of just, the jump didn’t work and Mr. Knievel got hurt in and of itself wasn’t an interesting story, but the story of Bob Knievel almost dying, and then, you know, not dying, would have been a much better story, and that was the story they decided to engineer.

The admission by the venue owner’s son of a plan to lie about Knievel’s condition, and “deciding to engineer” a story is notable as a testimony of media fakery, but it is a half-truth. I don’t think the man on the motorcycle (if any) was hurt at all. I see signs of fakery in the clip of the jump and accident itself (1:15 - 1:40): low resolution, multiple cuts, critical parts of the image out of frame. If that was a real man hitting the ground, he would not have survived, or if he survived, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to ride again.